That leaves Wolff, the front man for the A's ownership group and a commercial real estate man at heart.

Wolff's efforts to move the team out of Oakland have been a disaster. The Giants own the rights to the South Bay, and everyone knows it. Instead of working on a solution with the city that has housed the team for 44 years, through four championships and plenty of lousy seasons, Wolff and his fellow owners chose to play the waiting game with Major League Baseball.

They tarped the upper deck and started selling off talent, season after season. They figured if their revenue sharing envelope keeps getting smaller, the rest of baseball just has to give them San Jose. Looks like Wolff's game of chicken isn't paying off. Commissioner Bud Selig told the A's this past week to look elsewhere if they want. But the subtext was clear: San Jose shouldn't be on their itinerary.

That leaves the team in limbo, the ownership in the dark and the fans up the creek. The only ones with their heads on straight, it seems, are the players and coaches who are putting on a good show of it this season, keeping pace with their rich cousins in San Francisco. The joy of having a two-team market is on full display this weekend at AT&T Park, with huge crowds packing in to see the crossbay rivals do battle.

The good times in San Francisco make A's fans sick. Out at the Coliseum recently, I spent some time with a guy named Steve Eigenberg. His first Oakland A's game was the Oakland A's first game: April 17, 1968. He's been coming ever since, but he's a card-carrying member of the Wolff hating party.

"Winning should be a commitment, as well as making money," said Eigenberg, 59. "Instead, this current ownership is hell-bent on getting out of here. I hope this is not a long-term ownership group. I hope the other owners will tell them to sell the thing."

Down the way, Dave Filipek, 68, and John Einstos, 58, were enjoying their umpteenth game together at the Coliseum, two buddies with a shared love for the A's. As season-ticket holders, they have seen the crowds dwindle and the teams decline. And they're angry.

"I was really upset four or five years ago when Wolff announced they were moving to Fremont," said Filipek. "It cost the team thousands of season-ticket holders."

His friend Einstos is unequivocal in his stance as well: "Everybody in the organization has to be committed to winning. If your priority is real-estate investment, that's not good.

"Nobody forces anyone to buy a baseball team, but these guys sure do love their antitrust exemption," said Einstos, who sits right behind the plate with his friend every chance they get. "A baseball team is the heart of a municipality. It's more than a business. But they treat it like a business."

This is no way to run a ballclub, folks. Wolff and his silent majority partner, John Fisher, need to give up on San Jose. They need to partner up with city government and local business leaders on a plan that will work in Oakland. This is a city that needs all the help it can get. As the wealthy curators of this public trust, you owe the city and the team's fans that much.

Find a way to get a beautiful new stadium built in Oakland. If you can't do that, sell it to someone who will.

Bay to Breakers to London: If you're out at today's Bay to Breakers race, keep an eye out for a really fast centipede.

For the past few years, a group of world-class distance runners from the Bay Area have tied themselves together to compete in the wacky road race as a team.

Leading the charge is Armen Vartanian, a Burlingame High School graduate who ran cross-country and track at UC San Diego before becoming a professional triathlete. He is now an Olympic hopeful in the marathon.

Farther back in the speedy centipede is Chris Chavez, a Cal graduate and current Haas Business School student who also hopes to qualify for the London marathon. He trains with Vartanian and is coached by Magdalena Lewy-Boulet, a local Olympian from Berkeley who represented the United States in the 2008 marathon. Chavez is a member of the Bay Area Track Club and lives in Menlo Park.

Bringing up the rear are Giliat and Yosef Ghebray, brothers and elite runners who also went to Cal. These guys are fast. Yosef owns a 13:30 5,000-meter time, and Giliat ran a 63-minute half marathon in San Jose recently, coming in second. Both live in Union City and have qualified for the U.S. trials for London, to be held in Oregon next month. The Ghebrays went to James Logan High School, where they became two of the country's fastest high school runners.

So, if you see this centipede, get out of the way.

The Wondo waiting game: The Earthquakes are sitting on pins and needles, waiting to find out whether star striker Chris Wondolowskiwill be named to the U.S. national team Sunday.

Wondo, the team's leading scorer and undisputed leader, could be on head coach Jurgen Klinsmann's short list to beef up a squad that came up painfully short last year against the likes of Costa Rica and Ecuador.

A number of big-time players, including Clint Dempseyand Tim Howard, were able to join the national team this week after their European league seasons concluded. And now it's time for Klinsmann to add his MLS players as he fine-tunes the team for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers in June. Qualifying for the 2014 Cup, to be held in Brazil, begins June 8 when the U.S. hosts Antigua and Barbuda. It continues June 12 with an away match against Guatemala.

If Wondo makes the squad, he'll miss two important Quakes games against Los Angeles and Kansas City, but team President David Kavalassured me that the first-place squad is plenty deep and they'd love to see their star player wearing the national kit.

And if Wondo makes this round, you can expect to see him in the World Cup too.

"All the players coming now for this very special four-week period represent our core," Klinsmann said this past week. "If tomorrow was the World Cup, this is the group that comes in for our World Cup roster."

Klinsmann better get it right if he expects to resurrect the flagging U.S. squad.

"It will be exciting on May 20 to have all our MLS players join camp, as well as some of the foreign-based guys who are finishing their commitments, because they are in a full run right now and they should all be really fit and they should be excited," he said. "Because of the different schedules for the season, it's always a challenge for us because you want them all to be in top shape and be confident and feel like they're ready for the competition."

Whichever way it turns out for Wondo, the Quakes win. Ironically, embattled A's owner Wolff also owns the Quakes, and they're doing great on the field and in the stands, with a new stadium on the way in San Jose. No wonder he wants to move his baseball team there.

Al Saracevic is The Chronicle's Sporting Green editor. You can e-mail him at asaracevic@sfchronicle.com.